Wow, thank you very much! I would have thought most LessWrongers would answer the question “Why does anything exist?” with the answer “That question does not make sense.”
I think that most LessWrongers would vote for mathematical universe. The idea of timeless mathematical manyworld universe was presented in sequences. When I first meet it I was attracted to its simpleness and beauty.
But now I found that where is reasonable objection to it, like expected complexity problem. Most math objects should be extremely complex, and it is not what we see.
Yes. It has the same problem as pure dust theory. I would expect a life where objects are jittering, floating into the air, and so on, just enough to preserve a continuous life and experience but without killing me.
But that doesn’t happen, so those explanations are false.
Unfortunately I recently come to conclusion that this argument against dust theory is flawed.
Because thoughts of dust mind are random and are not causally dependent from his experiences. So he in 50 per cent cases will think that his environment is OK and in 50 per cent that it is random and strange. While his environment is 99.99 per cent cases is strange.
The best example here is our thoughts during dreams. Sometimes during a dream we think that the dream landscape is normal and sometimes we think that it is bizarre. But in the morning we understand that it was bizarre in most cases!
This happens because our mind is not able to calculate bizzareness during the dream.
(I don’t claim that we are Boltzmann brains after all, but we have to find another proof)
I don’t see any reason to think that the thoughts of a dust mind would be random in that particular way, namely thinking that the world is ok in 50% of the cases.
If dust mind has random experiences he should also has random thoughts.
Most dust minds will not interested in the question about orderness of their reality. But in the small subset of those who interested, the answers will be random.
And if you see mess in my room now you may think that it is rather random )))
A dust mind isn’t the same as a Boltzmann brain. A dust mind would be an interpretation of random facts as a mind—e.g. you could interpret the movement of dust particles on the road outside as a mind, if you give a sufficiently complicated interpretation. But you may be right that we should expect that mind to have random experiences and random thoughts. I am just saying that I don’t see why randomness would necessarily lead to a 50⁄50 probability between those two—it isn’t clear that they are equal regions of the probability space. It could be like saying that rolling two dice randomly should give you a 12 half the time.
Yes they are not the same by their origin, but (probably) the same in distribution of their possible experiences.
In the dice example only in 1 case of 12 the “environment” will be not random, but the mind who looks on dices is also has random thoughts about dices, depending not form the dices results, but form a random coin.
So in 6 cases he will think that they a random (and they random), in 5 cases that they not-random, but they are random and in 1 case that they are not random and they are not random.
In short we can’t believe our thought process in determining randomness of enivronment, because if the dust mind our thought process is full of errors.
But I still think that I am not random dust mind, and I use other lines of thoughts to prove it.
First is that any random mind is equal to some real mind (if any exist) and by process similar to quantum (big world) immortality will be immediately “copied” into real one.
The second is that there is lines of sequences in the space of all possible mind, which connect similar mind-states and these lines tend to converge to more stable ones. I suggested this idea last year to a guy here on LW who was really afraid that he is dust-mind and he was satisfied.
Some other ideas exisе about it, I should make a map about BB and dust minds. ))
MUH has a certain appeal, but its problems as well, as you say (and substituting CUH for MUH feels a little ad hoc to me), and I fear parsimony can lead us astray here in any case. I still think it’s a good attempt, but we should not be too eager to accept it.
Maybe you should make a map of reasons for why this question matters. It’s probably been regarded as an uninteresting question since it is difficult (if not impossible) the test empirically, and because of this humanity has overall not directed enough brainpower to solving it.
If we able to find the answer, it will provide as with exact knowledge of the nature of reality and solve all remaining questions about qualia and consciousness. The last will help to solve the problem of the nature of mind and personal identity and help with creation of AI and uploading. So, it will help us create safe AI and reach immortality. That is very practical goals.
The answer will also include a Theory of everything, which will provide us with complete understanding of physics.
So to have the answer is useful.
We also have some evidences for possible solution. In preambula to the map I listed 5 types of possible evidences. But non of them is definitive.
Wow, thank you very much! I would have thought most LessWrongers would answer the question “Why does anything exist?” with the answer “That question does not make sense.”
I didn’t know there was such a range of options.
I think that most LessWrongers would vote for mathematical universe. The idea of timeless mathematical manyworld universe was presented in sequences. When I first meet it I was attracted to its simpleness and beauty.
But now I found that where is reasonable objection to it, like expected complexity problem. Most math objects should be extremely complex, and it is not what we see.
Yes. It has the same problem as pure dust theory. I would expect a life where objects are jittering, floating into the air, and so on, just enough to preserve a continuous life and experience but without killing me.
But that doesn’t happen, so those explanations are false.
Unfortunately I recently come to conclusion that this argument against dust theory is flawed.
Because thoughts of dust mind are random and are not causally dependent from his experiences. So he in 50 per cent cases will think that his environment is OK and in 50 per cent that it is random and strange. While his environment is 99.99 per cent cases is strange.
The best example here is our thoughts during dreams. Sometimes during a dream we think that the dream landscape is normal and sometimes we think that it is bizarre. But in the morning we understand that it was bizarre in most cases! This happens because our mind is not able to calculate bizzareness during the dream.
(I don’t claim that we are Boltzmann brains after all, but we have to find another proof)
I don’t see any reason to think that the thoughts of a dust mind would be random in that particular way, namely thinking that the world is ok in 50% of the cases.
If dust mind has random experiences he should also has random thoughts. Most dust minds will not interested in the question about orderness of their reality. But in the small subset of those who interested, the answers will be random.
And if you see mess in my room now you may think that it is rather random )))
A dust mind isn’t the same as a Boltzmann brain. A dust mind would be an interpretation of random facts as a mind—e.g. you could interpret the movement of dust particles on the road outside as a mind, if you give a sufficiently complicated interpretation. But you may be right that we should expect that mind to have random experiences and random thoughts. I am just saying that I don’t see why randomness would necessarily lead to a 50⁄50 probability between those two—it isn’t clear that they are equal regions of the probability space. It could be like saying that rolling two dice randomly should give you a 12 half the time.
Yes they are not the same by their origin, but (probably) the same in distribution of their possible experiences.
In the dice example only in 1 case of 12 the “environment” will be not random, but the mind who looks on dices is also has random thoughts about dices, depending not form the dices results, but form a random coin.
So in 6 cases he will think that they a random (and they random), in 5 cases that they not-random, but they are random and in 1 case that they are not random and they are not random.
In short we can’t believe our thought process in determining randomness of enivronment, because if the dust mind our thought process is full of errors.
But I still think that I am not random dust mind, and I use other lines of thoughts to prove it.
First is that any random mind is equal to some real mind (if any exist) and by process similar to quantum (big world) immortality will be immediately “copied” into real one.
The second is that there is lines of sequences in the space of all possible mind, which connect similar mind-states and these lines tend to converge to more stable ones. I suggested this idea last year to a guy here on LW who was really afraid that he is dust-mind and he was satisfied.
Some other ideas exisе about it, I should make a map about BB and dust minds. ))
MUH has a certain appeal, but its problems as well, as you say (and substituting CUH for MUH feels a little ad hoc to me), and I fear parsimony can lead us astray here in any case. I still think it’s a good attempt, but we should not be too eager to accept it.
Maybe you should make a map of reasons for why this question matters. It’s probably been regarded as an uninteresting question since it is difficult (if not impossible) the test empirically, and because of this humanity has overall not directed enough brainpower to solving it.
If we able to find the answer, it will provide as with exact knowledge of the nature of reality and solve all remaining questions about qualia and consciousness. The last will help to solve the problem of the nature of mind and personal identity and help with creation of AI and uploading. So, it will help us create safe AI and reach immortality. That is very practical goals.
The answer will also include a Theory of everything, which will provide us with complete understanding of physics.
So to have the answer is useful.
We also have some evidences for possible solution. In preambula to the map I listed 5 types of possible evidences. But non of them is definitive.